Communicator

It is so interesting and enriching to discover other peoples' lives and habits.

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I joined Slowly roughly half a year ago. I had penpals since I was about 16, snail mail that is, in the late 1970s. So I wondered what it would be like to renew penfriendship through an App.

At first: disappointment. Although I published a very long profile I received many hello and goodbye notes without any information about the people writing. What went wrong here? I also got the impression that I received a couple letters from fake persons. So it was just a logical conclusion that one of my first contacts thought I was fake too. Well, I am not. It was close before I wanted to quit the App. But then I read many profiles and started to contact people again.

After a while I found perfect matches from different countries and continents. And different age groups. It surprised me the most the deep and clever conversations with every single one of them. As long as people are interested in each other and listen to what the other have to tell, things go well. If just people talk about themselves and regard a letter as a stage to present themselves – wasted time for me.

What I can say is that it is so interesting and enriching to discover other peoples’ lives and habits. And ideas as well as beliefs. Amazing. When you think about how a correspondence starts and then think about what has become of it … Just an example: the initial letter is almost the same all the time. Then you try to fix common subjects and you write about these. You become curious: who is the person? So the conversation becomes more open over the time. That’s what I feel is enriching. Don’t just talk about superficial things. Even if you feel you lose privacy. It’s not the broad public you’re writing to anyway like in other social media when you address more than one.

What I can add is that I never would have met these people in real life. I did not expect such a close relationship through correspondence with people with sometimes completely different backgrounds and interests. Still, we find common subjects to talk about. And go deeper. So every single correspondence went in different directions, into different subjects. Every single one is an enrichment. Every single one is worth it.

Trust is a major point. You have to trust people. If you haven’t got trust, then you’re surely in the wrong place. If you feel you cannot trust a person, you have to stop corresponding. If you feel you can trust no-one, then this App is the wrong one for your device.

It’s so exciting to see someone having written a letter which is on its way. You could never have seen that in snail mail times. But this is no instant messaging either. You have to be patient until the letter finally arrives. I always wonder what kind of algorithm is behind this. But that’s a different question. And it’s a bit like Christmas: you see a letter arriving but you don’t know what will be inside. Waiting for a present. And that’s indeed the point: I feel so gifted by the letters from abroad. As long the letters reveal personality, as long as the letters are honest and as long as they contain more than the local weather check.

That’s the way I select. That’s the way I’m satisfied. And surely that’s the way my correspondence partners feel too.
Thanks to the team. If you readers out there can afford, buy them a coffee or buy some stamps. That’s what I did.
They deserve it.